Field
Exemplary embodiments relate to an insect trap, and more particularly, to an insect trap that attracts insects by decoy light and collects insects by suctioning the insects using an air stream generated by a suction fan.
Discussion of the Background
Insects that may be potentially harmful to humans have been recently increased in number, due to change of climate conditions such as global warming and social policies. Harmful insects not only damage crops and livestock, but also negatively impact people by transmitting pathogenic bacteria, such as malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, and the like. Particularly, studies on a mosquito insecticide method have been actively conducted due to fears related to the spread of zika virus (ZIKV).
Conventional insecticidal methods may include a chemical pest control methods using an insecticide, a biological pest control methods using mudfish and the like, a physical pest control methods using a blacklight traps and/or carbon dioxide that attracts and kills the harmful insects by applying a high voltage, and an environmental pest control method such as removal of puddles or other environment conditions favorable to insect larvae. However, chemical pest control methods may cause secondary contamination, and biological pest control methods or environmental pest control methods may be expensive, time consuming, and labor intensive. In addition, conventional physical pest control methods using an insecticide or insect trap may cause user inconvenience due to complicated configurations of the insect trap or endanger users from usage of the high voltage.
A UV light source may be used for various purposes, such as medical purposes including sterilization and disinfection, analysis purposes based on variation in intensity upon irradiation of UV light, industrial purposes such as UV curing, beauty treatment such as UV tanning, insect collection, identification of counterfeit notes, and the like. Typical UV lamps utilizing the UV light source include, for example, a mercury lamp, an excimer lamp, a deuterium lamp, and the like. However, typical UV lamps may have high power consumption, high heat generation, short lifespan, and environmental pollution due to toxic gas supplied to the lamps.
In order to address the problems of typical UV light sources, a UV light emitting device (LED) has found favor due to various merits including low power consumption and its eco-friendly characteristics. Accordingly, studies on development of an insect trap that collects insects using a suction fan after attracting the insects using decoy light have been made.
However, conventional insect traps that collect insects using the suction fan after attracting the insects by utilizing a typical UV LED have problems, such as: (i) noise generated by a suction fan due to fouling of dead insects, such as mosquitoes, on the suction fan, (ii) escape of mosquitoes from the insect trap, (iii) insufficient suctioning of mosquitoes into the insect trap due to difficulty in controlling the speed of the suction fan, and (iv) low suction efficiency or high power consumption due to difficulty in controlling air stream generated by the insect trap.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the inventive concept, and, therefore, it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.